In 1938, fewer than a thousand Muslims lived in all of Canada, yet they built a mosque, and their Christian and Jewish neighbours helped pay for it.
This is the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Alberta, widely called the first purpose-built mosque in Canada.
In the early 1930s, a group of women led by Hilwie Hamdon asked the mayor for land, so children could learn their faith. He said the community had no money. She said they would find it.
During the Great Depression, they travelled the prairies collecting gifts from small Muslim communities, held bake sales, and walked down Jasper Avenue asking shop owners for help, whatever their faith.
A Ukrainian-Canadian builder designed it, with tall arched windows and two minarets topped with onion domes, a look that echoed Eastern Christian churches.
It opened on December 12, 1938, dedicated by the scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
In 1946, a school needed the land, so the building was moved. In the early 1980s, the community opened a larger mosque, also named Al-Rashid, and the old one stood empty.
Then it was slated for demolition, to make room for a hospital.
Women of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women took up the cause. They held a banquet and dinners, travelled again, and raised money toward the move and restoration, expected to cost about seventy-five thousand dollars.
On May 28, 1992, it reopened at Fort Edmonton Park, where it stands today as a historic building.
Al-Rashid Mosque was expected to be the first mosque in North America. However, it was built in 1938, just after the Mother Mosque of America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and several years after the 1929 mosque built in Ross, North Dakota. At the time, there were about 700 Muslims in Canada. Members of Edmonton's Muslim community approached Edmonton Mayor John Fry about purchasing land to construct the mosque. A group of dedicated individuals travelled the province to raise money from Muslims in small communities. They also held bakes sales and collected funds from Jews, Christians and Muslims to construct the mosque.
The mosque was built by Ukrainian-Canadian contractor Mike Drewoth in a style resembling the Eastern Christian (Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox) immigrant churches and opened on December 12, 1938. In the 1940s, the building was relocated from its original site to a location a few blocks away to make room for a school expansion.
By the 1980s, the mosque had been outgrown by the booming Muslim community, and had fallen into disrepair. The city, which owned the land on which it was located, was contemplating demolition of the site to expand a hospital. However, in 1991, it was decided that the mosque was to be moved to Fort Edmonton Park at a cost of $75,000. About a year later, on May 28, 1992, it was reopened in the park.
The History, Architecture and later sections are adapted from the Wikipedia article “Al-Rashid Mosque”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article. Text has been shortened.
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